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8.01.2007
Dalrymple preserving deep-rooted heritage for seven-generation farm
By TAMARA SCULLY
AFP Correspondent
Wykertown — Two hundred years of family history — and of farming — create the building blocks for Plaid Piper Farm.
Several hundred acres of rolling pastureland surround the proud old red farmhouse, several barns, outbuildings and the windmill. Don’t overlook the portable chicken coop, the ingenious retro-fitted RV “turkeymobile,” or the side pasture, where the pigs gleefully run and chase their tails in the mud, protected by an electric fence.
Paul Dalrymple always knew that he wanted to return to farming. He grew up on the farm on which his parents, Anne and Barret, ran a successful dairy.
The dairy closed in 1984. After attending a two-year land grant agricultural college, Dalrymple held other jobs. But now, he has returned to his farming roots.
Only Dalrymple isn’t doing dairy farming. And he isn’t practicing much of what he learned in college. Instead, he has whole-heartedly embraced a more sustainable means of agriculture: pastured livestock, naturally-grown vegetables and fruits and a diversity- including heirloom varieties — of the many crops he is growing around the farm.
The conventional way of farming, which he was taught in college, involved monocropping, a “get big or get out” philosophy, and confinement livestock.
Yet Dalrymple knew that a small family farm, based on natural practices, crop diversity and rotational grazing was the answer for him.
Last fall’s Northeast Small Farm and Rural Living Expo, which was held locally at the Sussex County Fairgrounds, along with PASA’s (Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture) annual conference, helped Dalrymple make the final decision to commit to running a small, diverse, livestock and vegetable farm beginning this season. The time was right for the family and in the marketplace.
Rotational grazing, using local grains milled at Penwell Mills, in Port Murray, for supplemental feed, providing adequate shelter from predators and the elements and the emphasis on the interconnectedness of everything on the farm is a large part of Darymple’s philosophy. He includes reusing and recycling materials in that philosophy, and practices what he preaches. Thus old tires have become raised beds for potatoes, the stripped RV a home for the turkey and old outbuildings now serve for drying garlic or flowers, and for providing shelter to young hatchlings.
While this is the first season that Plaid Piper Farm is up and running, the family is busy taking and filling meat orders and harvesting the summer vegetables.
Daughter Paige has pruned and reclaimed the old blueberry patch on the hill, and the organic blueberry harvest, sold at the farm, has been quite fruitful.
With two batches of chicken and one of the Cornish hens successfully raised and sold, Paul and his partner Eileen are in gear for raising quite a few more broiler hens before the winter.
Currently, the farm is marketing its products online only. This is a “soft opening,” allowing them to more easily handle the orders and get a feel for the demand. And demand has been brisk. With a half-dozen pigs going to slaughter in the fall, pre-orders of halves or whole pigs are filling quickly. The 48 turkeys are about to move from the sheltered shed to the “turkeymobile,” where outdoor access to fresh pasture is just a ramp’s length away. The portable chicken coops, which are moved each day to fresh pasture, hold the 50 to 100 chickens in each month’s batch.
Next season, they said they hope to increase the amount of animals, based on this year’s sales and the family’s capacity to sustainable handle more. After having a year under their belt to learn — from their mistakes and successes, as well as the knowledge of other farmers practicing rotational grazing — Plaid Piper Farm will expand to include beef, meat goats and possibly sheep.
They also hope to expand their direct marketing efforts to a local farmers’ market.
Dalrymple has been networking with other local farmers practicing rotational grazing and natural growing methods.
Another means of gathering knowledge and new methods is reading. Joel Salatin’s books on running a small, diverse family farm naturally, have proven invaluable to Dalrymple.
So far, the family has observed that many people are very interested in reconnecting with the natural environment. The response to having pasture-raised meat has been encouraging.
“We want real stuff. We want real life experiences,” Eileen said. That, she believes, is why the average person today is interested in finding out, once again, how their food is grown. “People want to belong on the farm.”
As Dalrymple eloquently expressed in his “letter from the farmer,” as seen on his Web site:
“I grew up on this farm. What a joy it was and still is. I love it. I always wanted to be a farmer, in my heart I never wanted to do anything else.
“We grow your food (and my family’s) in an environment that is healthy for the animal and healthy for us. Our food product is not going to be like anything you can buy in the grocery store or from a ‘factory’ farm whose goal is mass production, not quality production. Our products will be fresh, clean, humanely raised, ecologically sensitive and drug and chemical free. Something we are very proud to produce and confident you will be delighted to eat.”
“Plaid Piper Farm is a beautiful example of responsible farm management on a sustainable and environmentally sound small family farm,” he wrote.
Plaid Piper Farm can be reached at: www.plaidpiperfarm.com or call 973-875-4535 for more information.